Immigration And The Pro-Life Movement

When Tom Tancredo
first ran for president, theAmerican Spectator`s
anonymous
"Prowler" blog wrote:"It`s not clear
Tancredo is in line with the mainstream, social
conservative wing of the GOP he seeks to align himself
with." [Tancredo`s
Dubious Allies, By The Prowler on 1.16.07 @
12:08AM]

Tanton
and many other immigration reform patriots are motivated
in part by concerns about overpopulation. And some of
them do believe that
birth control, and even in some cases
abortion, could complement immigration reduction to
reach that goal.

The
extent to which Tanton supports abortion, let alone
eugenics, as well as how influential he is in the
patriotic immigration reform movement, has been wildly
exaggerated. But for the sake of argument, let`s assume
it`s all true.

So what? A vast number of small government supporters are
pro-choice libertarians who see
"government in your bedroom" just as bad as"government in
your pocketbook". One of the Libertarian Party`s
slogans is
"pro-choice on everything". But for some reason I
have yet to hear theAmerican Spectator
or any other conservative voice claim that the hidden
agenda behind tax cuts is abortion.

Norquist and other open-borders
conservatives still continue to play this gambit. I
recently saw a prominent open-borders"conservative"
debate immigration at an off-the-record meeting of
Christian Right leaders. This man has virtually no
pro-life credentials. He has argued that the GOP should
abandon its opposition to
homosexual marriage and that
Muslim Fundamentalists were natural allies to the
Religious Right. Yet he suddenly became teary-eyed
as he accused immigration patriots of being
secretly motivated by evil population controllers;
and managed to change the conversation to
China`s one-child policy, at which point the crowd
erupted in applause.

That being said, it is silly to
dismiss concerns with overpopulation as being necessarily pro-abortion.

A quick reality check: Far from
being a secular liberal, Malthus was a
Christian clergyman who urged
sexual restraint rather than contraception, much
less abortion, as a means for population control.

Pro-lifers are
divided on the issue of contraception, but a large
number have no objection; and there is no reason why
that cannot be used to limit population absent abortion.
And even if one is against contraception, there are

other ways
that married couples can reduce the chance of having
children. (I will spare the reader the details.)

When God told Noah
"be fruitful and multiply" there were (at least
if you take the bible literally)
eight people on earth—no—not over 6 billion. (If you
are not a biblical literalist, then the world population
at the time of the flood was estimated at only 14
million people.) Either way, mankind has done its share
of multiplying since then. Conservatism is about limits.
The idea that the world can sustain tens of billions of
people is hubris at its very worst.

I`m sure some will say there is
still a biblical mandate to have as many children as
possible, and I will not dispute their interpretation of
the scripture. That`s fine—but it does not follow that
all children in the world
must reside in the United States.

The late environmentalist and
immigration restrictionistGarett
Hardin always emphasized that overpopulation wasa
local, not a global problem. Virtually all the
population growth in the US is the result
of post-1965 immigrants and their children. Thus, Robert
Locke has
noted on VDARE.COM that reducing population growth
in the US through immigration restriction
eases the problem that some would suggest should then be
settled through abortion.

With all this said, Western
birthrates are below replacement and the
Third World reproducing rapidly both inside
and outside our country. Therefore, I am all for the
pro-natalist policies for the
majority population industrialized countries. But
that does not mean that
unlimited population growth is a concern that should
be ignored.